The Myth of Clytemnestra | Agamemnon's Wife, Iphigenia, and Orestes Explained

On the rooftop of the palace of Mycenae, a lone watchman has been gazing at the night sky for ten years. For it had been arranged that when Troy fell, a beacon of fire would be relayed across the mountain peaks. And the moment that light finally appears, the first person inside the palace to receive the news is Queen Clytemnestra.

Ten Years Without the King: Aegisthus, the Cousin Who Entered the Palace

Clytemnestra was the wife of Agamemnon. While her husband was away on the expedition to Troy, Aegisthus, Agamemnon's cousin, kept approaching her, trying to win her heart. Aegisthus was the son of Thyestes, from a family that had long harbored a grudge against Agamemnon's father, Atreus.

Before departing, Agamemnon had left a trusted bard at the palace, asking him to watch over his wife. Aegisthus sent this bard off to a desolate island, and only after the man guarding her was gone did Clytemnestra, the story goes, go to Aegisthus' house. This is precisely the account Nestor tells Telemachus in Book 3 of Homer's Odyssey.

The News Carried by the Beacon, and a Prepared Welcome

Aeschylus' tragedy Agamemnon begins on the very night that beacon arrives. The fire was relayed from Mount Ida to Lemnos, then past Mount Athos all the way to Argos, lit peak by peak, and Clytemnestra, before the chorus, explains one by one exactly which route the beacon traveled.

She orders sacrifices laid on every altar in the city and declares that she will welcome her husband in grand style. She says that all the while she has merely kept the house faithfully, like a watchdog, and she speaks of how she nearly wasted away each time troubling rumors arrived from the battlefield. And she says that her son Orestes is not here now—that, out of concern for the uncertain state of the war, she entrusted him to King Strophius of Phocis. When Agamemnon returns, a crimson cloth is laid along the path he will walk in.

What Cassandra Saw

Agamemnon returns in his chariot, and behind it, in another chariot, comes Cassandra. Once the princess of Troy, she is now the woman Agamemnon has brought back as spoils of war. Clytemnestra urges her to enter the palace as well, but Cassandra, true to her nature as a prophetess, halts at the palace gates and pours out ominous visions.

She sees the splashing of bathwater, the cries of a man dying, and something spread out like a net held in someone's hands. Cassandra sees that the owner of those hands is none other than the wife of the house, and that the welcome extended to her is in fact a trap aimed at her husband. The chorus, unable to understand her words, sends her inside the palace, and Cassandra too finally walks through those doors.

What Happened Inside the Palace

Immediately afterward, Agamemnon is murdered inside the palace. Cassandra loses her life along with him. The one who carried out the killings was Clytemnestra herself, and Aegisthus is said to have taken part in the deed as well. The net and the bathwater scene the tragedy had shown earlier through Cassandra's mouth was, it turns out, a hint of how she drew her husband in.

As the motive behind Clytemnestra's decision, the tragedy points to her daughter Iphigenia. The story that Agamemnon sacrificed Iphigenia before setting out for Troy runs through the entire Oresteia trilogy, and Clytemnestra's revenge is framed as a response to that daughter's death. However, this motive is the chain of causation as told by Aeschylus' tragedy; in the story Homer puts into Nestor's mouth, Iphigenia does not appear. There, what links Aegisthus and Clytemnestra is a long courtship, along with the circumstance that the bard watching over her had been removed. The epic and the tragedy, then, explain the same murder with different reasons.

The Son Standing at His Father's Tomb

Years pass, and Orestes, who had grown up in another land, comes to Agamemnon's tomb with Pylades. Praying to Hermes to protect him, he offers a lock of his hair at the tomb—and just then his sister Electra, who has come to the tomb, discovers that lock of hair.

At first Electra is skeptical, but she notices that its color closely matches her own hair. Then she examines the footprints of two people left by the tomb, and only after confirming that one of them matches the proportions of her own foot exactly does she gain certainty. When Orestes also produces a piece of cloth woven by his sister's own hands, the two finally recognize each other.

Knocking at the Door Disguised as a Stranger

Orestes could not simply walk straight into the palace. So he and Pylades decide to pose as strangers speaking the dialect of Phocis. Carrying an urn, they plan to say that it holds Orestes' remains—that they have come to deliver the news that he is already dead.

The one who opens the door is Cilissa, the nurse who raised Orestes from childhood. Hearing the news, she grieves deeply, thinking of the child she nursed at her own breast. She must go bring the news to Aegisthus, and the chorus subtly advises her to deliver the message so that Aegisthus comes alone, contrary to the original instructions. It was all to summon him into the palace without his bodyguard.

The Death of Aegisthus, and the Son Standing Before His Mother

Aegisthus, entering to greet his guest, falls to the sword before he can even ask who his visitor is. A servant cries out in alarm and tells Clytemnestra what has happened, and Orestes, now standing face to face with her, no longer hides his purpose. The person he seeks is now her alone.

Clytemnestra bares her breast before her son, pleading with him to remember that he once nursed at this breast when he was not yet weaned. Orestes hesitates at that moment and asks Pylades beside him what he should do—and Pylades, silent until then, speaks for the first and last time. He says they cannot betray the oracle of Apollo received at Delphi, nor the oath they swore; that rather than betray the gods, they should turn the whole world into their enemy. At those words, Orestes steels his heart once more and leads his mother inside.

The Doors Open, and What Remains

The final moments inside the palace take place offstage, unseen. When the doors open a short while later, all that is revealed is Orestes and Pylades standing beside the bodies of Aegisthus and Clytemnestra.

Yet Orestes is seized not first by relief at having finished the deed, but by terror. He cries out that he has seen figures in black robes, wreathed in serpents and resembling Gorgons, swarming toward him. They were the Furies, come to hold him to account for the murder of his mother. The chorus says that Apollo will release him from this torment, but Orestes cannot remain and flees. The very moment he avenged his father became, at once, the beginning of another pursuit closing in on him.

The Same Event: The Ending as the Odyssey Tells It

Homer's Odyssey tells the aftermath far more briefly. Nestor tells Telemachus that Aegisthus ruled Mycenae for seven years before meeting his end at the hands of Orestes, who returned from Athens. And he recounts that after taking his revenge, Orestes held a funeral feast before the Argives for both of the dead—his mother and Aegisthus.

Where Aeschylus' tragedy stages each scene one by one—the reunion at the tomb, the nurse's grief, the mother's plea and Pylades' single words, even the Furies—the epic passes over the entire process in a few lines of summary. This is why the figure of Clytemnestra carries a completely different weight depending on which account you read first.

Characters Leading into the Next Stories

What Agamemnon, Clytemnestra's husband, experienced during the expedition to Troy and his return can be found in the myth of Agamemnon. How Homer tells the same events can be followed in the Odyssey story summary.

The voyage of Telemachus, who leaves Ithaca after hearing news of his father, is also connected to this story. If you are curious about the family history on the side of Agamemnon's brother Menelaus, you can find it in the myth of Helen.